Column: Just Wondering
Having never attended medical school (and not really having had the grades or commitment to do so), and having only completed 10th grade biology and freshman year astronomy, and rarely even driven by a medical school growing up, my understanding and/or instincts regarding how a medical professional plans and/or prepares for his day is as foreign to me as sugar-free chocolate (if I’m going down, I’m going down swinging; in truth however, considering the anti-cancer, alkaline diet I’m following, I do need to swing a little less frequently).
Letter: CVHS Needs Volunteers
The Centreville High School PTSA is hosting the 2013 CVHS All-Night After-Graduation Party on June 18, 2013 at Dave & Busters.
Column: Writing What Four
As far as anniversaries go–and I hope this one “goes” a lot further; acknowledging, dare I say celebrating my four-year survival anniversary from “terminal” stage IV (inoperable, metastasized) non-small cell lung cancer, a diagnosis I initially received on Feb. 27, 2009, along with a “13-month to two-year prognosis” from my oncologist, is certainly column-worthy.
Editorial: Hybrid Hijinks
Discouraging innovation in high-tech Virginia.
Consider this as a possible scenario (although perhaps we should have saved this for April 1): Fewer people are smoking, and many of those who do are smoking less. Virginia’s cigarette tax, the lowest of any state at 30 cents a pack, is a declining revenue source. Higher cigarette taxes are proven to reduce smoking. Under current logic in the commonwealth, there would be two courses of action to raise revenue: a) cut the cigarette tax, and b) charge non-smokers a fee to make up the difference and to compensate for the fact that they don’t pay cigarette taxes.
Column: E-male
My oncologist is a man. He has e-mail. He works for an HMO that encourages/advertises its connectivity and responsiveness – electronically, to its members. If I want to get medical answers in a reasonable amount of time – save for an emergency, typing, “mousing” and clicking is the recommended methodology. No more phone calls, preferably. Though pressing keys on a keyboard rather than pressing buttons on a phone might have felt counter-intuitive at first as a means of receiving prompt replies, it has proven over these past few years to be a fairly reliable and predictable information loop. Not in minutes necessarily, but more often than not during the same day – and almost always by the very next day. In fact, I’ve received e-mails from my oncologist as late as 9:18 p.m. (time-stamped) after a sometime-during-the-day e-mail had been sent.
Column: Definition of “Slippery Slope”
Figuratively speaking, of course. That definition being: a late stage cancer patient/survivor previously characterized as “terminal” awaiting the results of their most recent diagnostic scan. A scan that will indicate whether the tumors have grown, moved or God forbid, appeared somewhere new. If your life hung in the balance before the scan, waiting for results of this however-many-months-interval-scan will most assuredly loosen your figurative grip on your equilibrium and your most literal grip on your sanity. This is a domain, unlike the one referred to in one of the more infamous Seinfeld episodes, that one cannot master. To invoke and slightly rework Dan Patrick’s “catch” phrase: You can’t stop it, you can only hope to contain it.
Column: Seeing Progress on U.S. 1
As we move to the end of the General Assembly session, we are engaged in intense negotiations on the major issues. Also, we have had significant progress on U.S. 1.
Column: To ‘Get That Vote We All Deserve’
From Fix Gun Checks tour to White House.
After my sister Reema was killed at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007 our lives changed forever. I say “our lives” changed forever because gun violence doesn’t just affect the direct family of the person killed, but an entire community.
Letter to the Editor: The Right Influence
As a young Muslim girl growing up in the West, it can be hard to find a role model who is famous for helping others, especially in a sea of celebrities and reality stars.
Editorial: On Transportation
Compromise, in the works, should include indexing the gas tax to inflation.
Virginia needs more options, not fewer, in developing revenue to pay for roads and transportation. Compromise on a plan to increase transportation revenue should not include making Virginia the only state in the nation without a gas tax. The current, ridiculously low gas tax should be indexed to inflation. The last thing the commonwealth needs is to do away with an existing, major source of money for roads.
Column: Sex Trafficking Here in Northern Virginia
A couple of years ago, I became aware that sex trafficking of children was not solely an international issue, but one that was happening in our own backyard.
Column: A Complicated Answer
And a further explanation and corollary to last week’s column: “A Simple Question,” which attempted to sort through my reactions to being asked an extremely innocent, appropriate, well-intended and always appreciated courtesy: “How are you?” and the problem that it sometimes causes me. That problem being: a question which had it not been asked would then not require an answer. An answer that I’ll always give, but not before I’ve given it some thought, which if I hadn’t thought about, wouldn’t have bothered me in the least
Making the Difference Between Struggle and Success
Carmen Jordan of Reston has been a mentor for Fairfax Families4 Kids for six years. She is considered one of the most experienced mentors in the program. In addition to working full-time as a marquee account manager at Deltek in Herndon, Jordan makes herself available to “trouble-shoot” for the children and families she mentors. In the following column, she details her experiences with the program, and at-risk foster youth.
Letter: Taking Exception on Medicaid Expansion
Your recent editorial ["Expanding Medicaid Good For Virginia," The Connection, January 23-29, 2013] is noble in its desire to "extend health coverage to more than 400,000 residents who currently have no health insurance." If public policy making were just that easy. The editorial then goes on to indifferently say, "the Federal government picks up the tab.
Editorial: Extreme, But Brief, Volunteering
More than 150 volunteers needed to survey chronic homeless for three days in February.
The real solution to homelessness is housing. This week in Northern Virginia, a point-in-time survey will record all of the “literally homeless” individuals and families in the region. Last year, on Jan. 25, 2012, there were 1,534 people who were literally homeless in the Fairfax-Falls Church Community; 697 of them were single individuals and 837 were people in families. A third of the total number of homeless were children. Nearly 60 percent of the adult members of the homeless families were employed.